Fotis Kafatos
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fotis C. Kafatos was born on the island of Crete in Greece. As a student, he moved to Ithaca, New York where he later got his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University. He went on to received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1965. His following academic positions include Assistant Professor and later Professor and Chairman of the department of Cellular and Developmental Biology of Harvard University, Professor of Biology at the University of Athens and at the University of Crete, director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Heraklion and, most notably, served as the Director-General of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory from 1993 to 2005. Since 2005 he is a professor at Imperial College in London. He is a member of several prominent academic societies, including the Royal Society of London, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Académie des Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences and is one of the 22 members of the highly influential European Research Council.
A very prominent scientist world-wide, Fotis Kafatos is the most influential Greek biologist, having had a pivotal role in the establishment of the Faculty of Biology in the University of Athens, the Faculty of Biology in the University of Crete and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in Heraklion. His contribution to international science is well recognized, mostly due to his contributions in establishing cDNA cloning technology, the initiation of the Drosophila melanogaster Genome Project and for his more recent coordinated efforts in the field of malaria research. Towards these ends, Fotis Kafatos spearheaded the consortium of the Anopheles gambiae (Mosquito) Genome Project, which was completed in 2002.
